


Achilles is an asshole

by Ishxallxgood



Series: Achilles is an Asshole [2]
Category: The Iliad - Homer, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Briseis POV, Briseis is a good friend, Established Relationship, Freeform, M/M, Mild Angst, POV Outsider, Past Rape/Non-con, mentions of past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:35:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28412502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ishxallxgood/pseuds/Ishxallxgood
Summary: Achilles is an asshole. It is a fact. An undeniable truth. Someone had to tell Pat.Only, things aren't always as they seem.Briseis comes to find that maybe, justmaybeAchilles isn't quite the asshole she thought he was.
Relationships: Achilles & Briseis (Song of Achilles), Achilles/Patroclus, Achilles/Patroclus (Song of Achilles), Briseis & Patroclus (Song of Achilles)
Series: Achilles is an Asshole [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2146575
Comments: 15
Kudos: 246





	Achilles is an asshole

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first thing for this fandom, I am in Patrochilles hell. Pat is love. Pat is life. Achilles can suck it (but I do still love him, that asshole)

"Achilles is an asshole."

The moment those words left her lips, Briseis knows she's in for it. It isn't as if she's  _ trying _ to pick a fight with her best friend over his boyfriend, but it is just a universal truth, and it is about damn time someone told Patroclus.

"What, no!" Patroclus predictably exclaims, head whipping to the side to level her with his most intense glare. "You take that back!"

"Nope," Briseis says, popping the p as she settles back into her chair, lifting her book as if she hadn't just declared that the Achilles Pelides, love of his life, light of his world, was an asshole.

Patroclus continues to glare at her, and she can tell that it's half hearted. Even so, she sees the way his hand twitches by his side, the way his eyes dart over to the mug of tea he'd just prepared, fighting the urge to throw a fucking mug of tea at her.

She smiles as he relaxes slightly, that adorable pout adorning his lips as he leans against the table. "Fine, I'll bite. Please, oh all knowing Briseis, enlighten me on how Achilles is an asshole."

"Excellent," Briseis says, snapping the book shut. Where to start though? There were just so many ways in which Achilles was an asshole. Like how he makes Patroclus late for  _ everything _ because he's incapable of keeping his hands off Patroclus for five seconds. Or the way he literally talks down to everyone as if he's  _ better _ than them (she will never forget the time he referred to all of them as peasants and then demanded they fetch him some figs). Or his stupidly pretty face and how wonderfully punchable it is (although Patroclus would probably argue that that's not an example of assholery, and he might be right). Or the way he fucking just loses it at the drop of a hat if his fragile ego gets remotely threatened (that bitch fit he threw in senior year was a testament to that). Although, if she were to pick  _ one _ thing, it would probably be Deidameia. 

"Deidameia," she states plainly, and something inside Patroclus shifts. She watches as his features morph in slow motion, and the man standing before her is no longer the man she had known and loved for the past eight years. 

"Excuse me?" Patroclus bites out, every muscle in his body tensed.

"You know," Briseis says, hand waving vaguely, ignoring every warning bell going off inside her head. "Just that not only did he take her virginity  _ and _ managed to knock her up, but then refused to acknowledge her or the kid and even had the audacity to offer to pay for an abortion."

Something wild flashes across Patroclus' eyes, and she knows she done fucked up when that mug of tea sails across the room. She watches in abject horror as it arcs, painting the length of the room before crashing mere inches from her head, lightly splattering her arm and the chair with the last remnants of tea.

"No," he snarls, pushing off the table and crosses the room in five strides. The expression on his face is murderous and could rival Achilles' during a rampage, and she shrinks back in fear.  _ He's going to hit me,  _ she thinks, terrified, because this is  _ not _ the friend she knows and loves.

He doesn't hit her.

He stands before her, body vibrating in anger, fists clenching and unclenching before suddenly deflating. The rage melts off his face and is replaced by a look of absolute devastation as he looks between her, the splatter of tea spread across the room and the shattered mug. "Fuck," he breathes out, and drops to his knees. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," he chants as he picks up the broken pieces of the mug, nestling the smaller pieces in the bigger ones when it hits her. 

This is  _ the _ mug. The stupid raccoon mug Patroclus got from the so-called  _ Raccoon Store  _ a few years back when he had that research year in Toronto. It is the mug that Achilles had declared that he loved more than life itself and Patroclus had pouted, which led to Achilles declaring that he loved the mug  _ just shy  _ of how much he loved Patroclus. It is the mug that Patroclus only uses on the mornings Achilles has to meet with his mother (who after all these years  _ still _ doesn't approve of Patroclus) because it makes him feel better.

Briseis bites at her lips, nervously imaging the look on Achilles' face when he finds his precious mug  _ destroyed _ . She idly wonders if this will be the day that Achilles finally loses it on her. She watches silently as Patroclus cleans up the mug as best as he can, pausing to run his fingers over the mostly intact head of the raccoon. She wants to say something, anything, but words escape her. 

"Look, Briseis," he says, voice trembling, hand closing around the raccoon. "I know what it looks like to everyone, because yes, she got pregnant and he left her out cold. But you weren't there, Briseis."

Patroclus lets out another shuddering breath and sits back on his haunches. "You weren't there," he repeats, rubbing absently at the raccoon. He takes another breath and squeezes his eyes closed, silent tears tracking down his face. "You weren't the one who had to hold him and tell him it was going to be alright, that you weren't mad at him. That there was absolutely nothing to forgive because he had done nothing wrong. That it wasn't his fault he had been _violated,_ and that it didn't mean anything that his body had reacted to stimulation, because he was seventeen, Bri. He was  _ seventeen _ , of course he finished, because he was fucking  _ seventeen _ and hormonal and drunk and a girl was riding his dick without his consent. 

You-" he gets cut off by a sob and Briseis slides down from the chair to gather him in her arms. She blinks back her own tears and pulls Patroclus closer, her heart breaking for the both of them because he is right.  She hadn't known. Couldn't have known. Achilles had never said anything, had always waved off any mention of Deidameia with a scoff and a roll of his eyes, but then again this was  _ Achilles. _ He always acted as if nothing bothered him, that it was all just water off his back (unless his pride or Patroclus was involved).

"I'm sorry," she offers, and he shakes his head, burrowing into her embrace. 

"'Tis okay," he sniffs, "you didn't know."

"Still, that was an asshole thing for me to say."

He shakes his head, wipes at his face and takes a deep, shuddering breath. "Not if you didn't know. It's  _ fine.” _

It's not  _ fine, _ not by the way he was crying, but Briseis holds him and settles them against the base of the chair. She hums his favorite song and pets through his hair as he tries to calm his breathing. She thinks about Achilles and Deidameia and how Deidameia had always played the victim, the lover scorned. The more she thinks about it the angrier she gets, and she wishes that there was another mug she could throw across the room too. She feels bad, for ever thinking that Achilles was an asshole. He's not. Well at least in this he's not. He's still an asshole for basically  _ everything _ else about him, but not for this.

She startles, the song dying in her throat, when she hears the door swing open and Achilles' voice ring out across the room. Somewhere between her humming and her fingers, Patroclus had fallen asleep. She watches with bated breath as Achilles steps into the room proper, the smile falling from his lips as his eyes settle upon them.

There is a question in his eyes, one she doesn't really want to answer. She knows that while he can’t see the remnants of the tea, or perhaps not even the shattered mug by their feet, he can tell (even asleep) that Patroclus has been crying. And if there is one thing she knows, it is that Achilles is rather unhinged when it comes to Patroclus being upset over  _ anything  _ (even something as dumb as the time his favorite coffee shop was out of his preferred pastry). Achilles would burn the world to the ground to ensure that Patroclus was happy. There is no avoiding it, so she pats the space beside her, releasing Patroclus into his arms as she moves back onto the chair.

Patroclus doesn't wake, but he does shift to bury his nose against Achilles' neck with a content sigh. It's moments like these where Briseis finds that even she cannot deny their connection. Achilles had once called Patroclus  _ philtataos  _ (when they were in their ancient greek phase) and he's not wrong. Patroclus is probably the  _ only _ person in existence Achilles considers on his level, and Achilles, well a blind fool could see that Achilles hangs the moon and stars in the sky for Patroclus. They are made for each other, a simple fact that even she has to admit (even though she knows that Patroclus is entirely too good for him). 

"So," Achilles says, turning his gaze from Patroclus' sleeping form to Briseis. "Care to explain?"

"Can I say no?" She asks, knowing she'll be denied. 

He merely raises an eyebrow at her and she shrinks back into the chair. He doesn’t have to say _“no”_ for her to know that it’s a no. It's evident in his stare that he will not be allowing her to leave without an explanation. 

"I'm sorry," she offers, and his lip curls in the beginnings of a snarl but relaxes when Patroclus shifts again, mumbling incoherently against his skin. "We were just talking," she continues hesitantly, "and well, I might have said that you're an asshole."

Achilles scoffs with a roll of his eyes, "when do you not?" And she has to admit that he has a point, because she does, all the time, to his face.

"Point," she says with a half smile. He doesn't smile back, but he also doesn't snarl again, so she counts that as a win.

"I'm not an idiot. I know I objectively, I can be an asshole," he says, running a hand through his hair. He leans back against the chair and closes his eyes, pulling Patroclus more comfortably against him. 

"In hindsight, I suppose, you're not  _ entirely _ an asshole."

"Oh," he says with a slight quirk of his lips, "going soft on me, Bri?"

"I mean," she says fidgeting with her sleeves. "You did ask me to homecoming when I first transferred, back in junior year before Agamenmon got a chance to."

He chuckles, cracks an eye to glance up at her. "You know I only asked you because Patroclus asked me to. He said that if that fuck face got to you first, you wouldn't have been able to say no, because  _ nobody  _ says no to Agafuckmon."

"You say no to him all the time."

"Yeah, well I'm better than him, so he can suck it."

Briseis smiles. She can't remember the last time she had a conversation with Achilles which didn't end in screaming and glaring and with Patroclus having to smooth things over between them, probably never. "I don't think I ever thanked you for that."

He shrugs, dismissing her with a wave of his hand. "There's no need, I kinda did ditch you right after and let you flounder on your own while I actually went with Patroclus."

She laughs, jabbing him in the side lightly with her toe. "You kind of did."

"So what happened here," he says, lifting his head to look at her dead on as he gestures between Patroclus and the broken mug. "I know he didn't freak out just because you called me an asshole."

"Of course not," she says with a sigh, eyes tracking his hands as they smooth down that one lock of hair behind Patroclus' left ear that never wants to sit right. "Well, you know Pat, he wasn't going to just roll over and take it, so he asked me to elaborate."

There is a beat and then Achilles breathes out an almost inaudible “Oh.” He falls silent again and for a moment the only noise in the room comes from the soft breathing of Patroclus against him and the gentle ticking of the clock above her head. “Let me guess, Deidameia."

"Yeah," she whispers, wishing she had never brought it up. Then again, if she hadn’t have brought it up, she never would have learned the truth. No, it is better this way, even though it is awkward. 

"Hn," he hums, hands moving from Patroclus’ hair to stroke shakily down his back, and for the first time Briseis sees just how  _ vulnerable _ he can be. Sometimes it's so easy for her to forget that Achilles isn't infallible. That he's not above simple human things like  _ emotions  _ and trembling limbs _.  _ That he does in fact feel things other than joy and rage (joy when he's in Patroclus' presence and rage when he's not).

It's funny, how one could know someone for the better part of a decade and not really  _ know _ them. Patroclus she knows (then again, Patroclus she loves, his paramour, not so much). Only now she finds that maybe, he's not so bad after all. As if  _ one _ fact about him can change her whole outlook. She finds that it can. This one fact speaks volumes about his character, besides, if Patroclus loves him (Patroclus, the absolute best person she's ever had the pleasure of knowing, the very best of men, loves him), how bad could he  _ really _ be?

They sit in stilted silence. She tries to count the ticks of the clock, but gets lost in her head and ultimately doesn't know how much time passes. It could have been seconds, minutes, hours, surely not the day, but eventually the trembling of Achilles' hands subsides and he takes a deep, calming breath. "So I guess he told you."

"Yeah," she mumbles again, and he looks up at her. There is an emptiness to his eyes she wishes to never see again. She decides right there and then that a  _ broken _ Achilles is something that she  _ never _ wants to witness in life. Achilles should always be filled with boundless energy and untold joy. "For what it's worth," she says shifting uncomfortably in the chair, pulling her feet up so she can tuck them under her, "I no longer think you're an asshole."

He chuckles softly, shaking his head and his light is back. He turns to press his nose against Patroclus' hair for a moment, breathing him in before turning back to flash her a cheeky grin. "You and I both know that's not true."

"I mean, in this particular moment it's true," she argues, and it's hard not to return his smile. She feels like she's witnessing a whole new side to Achilles, and finds that she can finally understand what Patroclus means when he says it's impossible not to smile back when Achilles' radiance is directed at you (it's rarely directed at anyone other than Patroclus so she's pretty sure she's the only other human who has ever witnessed that smile). "I'm sure you'll be back to your assholery tomorrow when you're the reason Pat misses the bus and thereby leaves me hanging for an hour."

Achilles barks out a laugh, startling Patroclus who suddenly jerks awake with flailing arms. It takes him a moment to calm and register what's going on. Heaving a sigh he falls back into Achilles' arms. "'chilles," he mumbles, turning around to throw a leg over Achilles so he's properly straddling him and burrows back into his neck. "Don't kill Bri, I threw the mug."

Achilles laughs again and Briseis finds herself laughing along with him. Patroclus lifts his head to glance curiously between the two of them and simply shrugs before dropping his head back down and wrapping his arms around Achilles' neck, hips grinding down against him.

Achilles' breath hitches and he stops laughing, hands gliding down Patroclus' body to rest on his hips, guiding his movements. Briseis tries her best to ignore them. Ignore the way that they conveniently forget that she's there. The way Patroclus lets out a breathy moan and continues to dry hump Achilles while they're literally sitting at the base of her feet. With an exasperated sigh, she comes to a stand, ruffling both their hair before stooping to collect the shards of ceramic. 

She has a feeling that Patroclus is getting back at her for the whole _ Achilles is an asshole _ thing, and he’s basically fucking Achilles in front of her to prove a point. Then again it is also entirely possible that they just don’t care, because this wouldn’t be the first time they decided to basically have sex in public. Achilles glances up at her when she returns with a broom to sweep up the rest of the mug and mouths “thank you” as she deposits the fragments in the trash and lets herself out. 

She finds herself smiling as she steps onto the bus. It is certainly not how she saw the morning ending when Patroclus had invited her over because Achilles had to go see his mom. It is certainly not how she saw herself bonding with Achilles (over a past trauma that had been a taboo subject for so many years). She's glad though. She's glad that Patroclus demanded an explanation. She's glad that for a moment, she was able to see Achilles the way Patroclus did.

Settling into her seat, she smiles as she Googles Toronto raccoon mugs.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> The mug is real and it is glorious and I love it more than life itself
> 
> Come scream at me on Twitter [ishxallxgood](https://twitter.com/ishxallxgood)


End file.
